Fi/Vitafoods Asia 2025: Prova on flavor innovation & plant-based solutions
06 Oct 2025 | Prova
At Fi/Vitafoods Asia 2025 in Bangkok, Thailand, Prova spotlighted its expertise in sweet brown notes like vanilla, cocoa, and caramel, alongside sustainable sourcing from Madagascar and Ghana. Hemaka Niyomnaitham, application lab manager for APEC at Prova Asia, shared how Prova helps brands enhance plant-based products by masking off-notes, improving mouthfeel, and tailoring extracts to market needs. Its Prova Sense service bridges flavor language, empowering customer collaboration and innovation.
Hello everybody.
This is William Bradford Nichols with Food Ingredients first, and I'm here live at Vita Foods Asia in Bangkok, Thailand, and today we are speaking with Himeka Neon Nyam, the application lab manager for AIPAC at Prova Asia.
Hello, Himeka, how are you today?
Hello, very nice.
And you?
I'm great, and we're excited to talk with you today.
I've got some questions already.
If it's OK, I'd love to jump right in.
Yes, definitely.
Perfect.
Can you tell us about Prova's sort of main innovations that you're highlighting at this year's show?
First thing is Prova is Pl house.
We come from France and we are specialized in sweet brown note.
When you talk about sweet brown note, it's actually vanilla, caramel, cocoa, for example, and our main product is extract.
Our vanilla extract like can come from different origin according to the customer interest and definitely a cocoa as.
We have like the cocoa extract from Ghana, for example, and , For the innovation, we are very focused on sustainability.
We are concerned about the environment.
We also have a contract with actually the vanilla farm, for example, in Madagascar, and we focus on a good environment for them and we also took care of all the supply chain for that and definitely we are also concerned about the health of the customer.
For instance, now we launched a lot of, er, innovation that support health plan, masking flavors like of plant-based, sometimes in plants-based you have off note, for example, in soy.
And then er maybe our solution will be your answer, because it's marked the not so of note like green note, earthy note that you don't want and make it neutral.
And er if you have problem about the mouth feel, for example, if you drink er oat milk, you will feel like it's not it's don't have a body enough.
So we have a solution that make the body like milk.
So it really depends what the customer looking for.
And our innovation will answer to that specific need of the customer.
Can you tell me sort of the major demographics and markets that these ingredients sort of speak to or address?
Yes, I think I think I already answered in the first question.
So for example, if a customers looking for the vanilla extract, like if they want to claim the origin, it can.
Bimbadagascar, for example, or Tahitans, we have as.
If they are looking for cocoa, we have a specific cocoa as like in Ghana for instance.
You mentioned health benefits too.
Can you tell us what sort of the main health benefits and functions of your products are?
Actually we are like a flavor, so we play with the profile, but I can be in different levels.
So if you look for very natural, we have like extract for example.
So our solutions come from the actual extract from vanilla bean, but if you want something like natural, we also have natural flavors like for the customer, yeah, so it depends what customer is looking for.
And speaking of the customer, how do you help customers and companies sort of bring their products to market?
Yes, definitely we have a lot of service.
Definitely most of the time customers will come to our sales department.
And then internally we have a good communication to answer to the customer demand.
As application lab we use our product which is flavored in different products for the customer.
It depends on where the customer come from.
Certain customers come from bakery, so we present in biscuit or cake, but if the customer come from, Like chocolate, we also present in chocolate.
So as application people we make a recipe.
Certain customers like want some like idea for the recipe, we also like provide that to them.
And also like now we also develop what is called Prova Sense, so this is Prova Sense.
So it's kind of like the language because you know, in communication it's very hard.
Like sometimes when customers say, OK, I want vanilla, but what kind of vanilla?
Yeah, for example, customer may be looking for the vanilla Madagascar, what kind of profile.
So now we have a service called Prova Sense, which is like we go and train the.
Customer in terms of language of Proa.
So when the customer wants certain profile, certain note, we can speak in the same language, and this is very interesting and the customers really love this training because it's also like sustainability is the gift of knowledge and in Prova we focus on that as.
That's very exciting.
Can you tell us a little bit about What we can expect from Prova in the next few years, I think we have a lot of projects to develop some innovation.
Most of innovation we have to coordinate with our marketing department to see the trend.
I think now there is a strong health trend and customers are always looking for something more healthy, something more sustainable.
And we make a product according linked to that trend.
Also, the storytelling and flavor is the profile is linked with emotion and the customer wants something that can satisfy the emotion.
So for us it's a combination of science and art, and that's what we want to provide to the customer.
